Handprints on the Wall

Looking for some great, inexpensive Princess Party ideas? Lucky you! I’ve got some really great ideas to share:

The Invitations:

Be creative in making your party announcement. You could purchase one like the Princess Party Invitation shown above, and add a little pop to it with glitter puffy paint, or by gluing on small rhinestones. Or you could make your own from scratch! For a princess party, you can make it in the shape of Cinderella’s shoe, a castle, like a rolled up scroll, anything like that! I thought it would be cute to send out the invitation like I was inviting each child to a royal ball. Here is what my invitations read:

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Princesses of all the land… Her Royal Highness, Princess Jada, is turning four years old! In celebration of this joyous occasion, the Princess requests the honor of your presence at a royal gala marking her fourth year.

Come One, Come All, in your finest princess attire, to insert place on insert date from insert time. Princess Jada and her royal Court will eagerly be awaiting your arrival! Please ring Queen Kendra to announce if you will be in attendance…

For some printable invitations, see the links at the bottom of this post. I’ve listed several good sites to visit for more Princess Party ideas.

(Me and Princess Jada)

Playing The Part:

Princess parties are so exciting for little girls, because they get a chance to dress up and have fun! Make sure that your little princess has a beautiful dress to wear. Also ask your guests to wear their own princess dress if they have one. Make sure that you have extra dresses and accessories on hand in case one of your guests doesn’t have their own. I had a dress up “station” where there was a little dress up trunk full of outfits, shoes, and jewelry for the girls to play with. What I didn’t have, I borrowed! If you have friends or family with little girls, see if they might have dress up stuff that you can borrow for the party and save yourself some money!

Don’t be afraid to play along too. Any little girl would love to have Mommy dress up along with her. I bought a Cinderella dress to wear as the host of the party. (It was like $30 at Party City, and I actually got my money back out of it by selling it close to Halloween time on ebay!) All of the girls loved that I was dressed up too! And I have to admit, I enjoyed it as well! Jada especially was in awe. She said, “Mommy, you really are Cinderella!” She was so excited!

Make A Cardboard Castle:

Last year I came across this site which showed how to make an awesome castle out of boxes, for under $10! We decided to make one for our daughter’s 4th birthday. She was having a princess party, and we thought this would be an awesome addition to the decor. And since we are all about frugal parties, this came within budget.

It requires several refrigerator boxes, which actually took a little while to track down. We went to Home Depot and spoke with a man in the appliances. We asked him if he had any big boxes like these that we could have. He told us that they break them down and get rid of them as soon as they come in. But, he would hold some for us from the next shipment. We had to keep checking back, but after a couple of days he had some ready for us. We ended up getting several refrigerator boxes, along with stove boxes, which worked out fine.

We didn’t follow the directions exactly. I thought it would be more frugal to just use duct tape instead of the rivets that they suggest you buy from the website. I was wrong. Buy the rivets, seriously. They aren’t that expensive, and after trying the duct tape, and several tubes of liquid nails, and using a staple gun, it FINALLY held together. Next time, I will definitely just buy the rivets. So, anyways, it came out really cute. I happened to have a can of gray paint leftover from a project, so I used it to paint the castle. Really you could paint it whatever color though. It took quite a few hours putting this thing together (doing it the hard way), but when it was finished we were very pleased. (Though I could have spent days detail painting it to look like real bricks!)

The kids LOVED the castle! They were in it for most of the party. We filled it with balloons, and they had a blast throwing them, kicking them around, and peaking out of the tower windows. The castle was the hit of the party!

A Throne For The Birthday Princess:

All I did was decorate one of our dining room chairs. I went to Walmart and bought a big sheet of stiff foam board. I also bought an inexpensive decorative stencil, and some glittery gold acrylic paint. I went home and cut the board to be the right size to make the back of the throne. Before I attached it, I used the stencil and the paint to create a really nice decorative scroll-like boarder. I also added a sparkly gold monogram by simply creating the lettering I wanted in Word on the computer, then printing it onto cardstock (thicker paper is better). I then cut it out to create a stencil, then traced it onto my board and filled in the lines with paint.

For the seat of the throne, I used a flower girl dress that my daughter had outgrown. I first cut the skirt away from the bodice of the dress. Since the seats of my dining room chairs are removable, I unscrewed the seat and removed it. I then duct taped the skirt onto the chair, on the inside of the frame where it wouldn’t be seen. I used the sash that came with the dress to cover the seat and then placed it back onto the chair frame.

Voila! A throne fit for a princess! And it cost me under $10. If you don’t have a pretty dress to destroy on hand, I’d suggest hitting up a Goodwill. They always have stuff like that for cheap!

Jada sat on her throne as each of her guest presented her with her gifts to open. This really made her feel extra special on her day!

Music:

You really do need to have some music playing to make your party lively and fun for the children. A great CD that we enjoyed for Jada’s party was Disney Princess Tea Party. We hooked up the stereo to play it continuously throughout the party. The girls loved dancing along with the fun tunes! The whole CD cost me $12, but you can also purchase individual songs and download only the ones you want, for $.99 each! If you Go Here and scroll down, you can listen to samples of each song, and purchase only those which you like.

Activities & Games:

Dress Up: As each girl arrived, I’d lead her to the dress up station, where she would get a dress (if she didn’t have one) and accessories. Then I would sit her down at a vanity to apply a little eye shadow, lip stick, blush, and stick on earrings if her ears weren’t pierced.

I really lucked up when I found an old vanity on the side of the road a week before the party. I had been wanting to use one, but didn’t want to buy one. I grabbed it up, took it home, and painted it, adding the same gold and glitter stenciling as was on the throne. What a blessing that was to find, it was perfect! (And I actually was able to sell it at a yard sale after the party after it was all painted and pretty!)

Kiss The Frog: It’s like Pin The Tail On The Donkey, but with a frog and lips. Draw a picture of a Frog Prince on a large piece of paper. Next create paper lips for the children to stick onto the frog. Blind fold each child, spin the around a few times, then let them see who can get their kiss closest to the frog’s mouth.

As a prize I let each child chose a Disney Princess Lip gloss.

Princess & The Pea: I like to precede this game by telling a short, paraphrased version of the story The Princess and The Pea, using a book mainly for visual interest. If you read it word for word, you’ll probably lose the attention of the kids pretty quickly, depending on their age of course, so try to keep it fairly short.

Now, you’ll need three or four small pillows and a marble or small rubber ball (for younger kids) to hide underneath one of the pillows. Have the girls line up sitting on the floor in front of the pillows. Let each girl have a turn to sit on each pillow and try to figure out which one has the “pea” under it. Once they have determined the correct pillow, announce to that girl, “You’re right! You must be a real princess!” And as their reward I gave each of our princesses a crown of her own (each was only $1.00 at Target!).

Karaoke: Having an open mike is so much fun for the little ones! Not to mention a crack up for the parents to watch! If you have access to a music player and a microphone or a karaoke machine, this is a wonderful, and inexpensive activity for your party goers to enjoy! My husband happened to have a PA system for his business, so we were fortunate to have that to use!

Decorations:

As if the huge castle wasn’t enough, right?

Besides the usual streamers and balloons, something that I got and loved was a Palace Scene Setter. It’s that faux palace backdrop that you see in the pictures. It was super easy to tack up, and really made a huge difference in creating a magical place for the kids. For $18, it’s so worth it!

(Not quite as perfect as the picture I was trying to replicate, but oh well, it was still a hit!)

The Cake:

Want to save some money, and still have an awesome birthday cake for your little princess? You don’t have to have any cake decorating skills to make this adorable castle cake! Believe me, if I can do it, I’m sure you can too! There’s even an instructional video that you can watch. Not only will it save you money by doing it yourself, it will be much cuter than a store bought cake and tastier too!

(*Notice the flags are missing from the tops of the cones? Here’s a little tip: don’t refrigerate the cake with the cones on it before you put the flags in the top! The cones get hard, and the toothpicks will cause the tips of the cones to break when inserted. Keep them room temp.)

After hours of searching for more Princess Party ideas, here is a list of the BEST places that I have found for some great ideas online!

Familyfun.com- Invitation idea, games, craft

Princess Paper Dolls- Printable Activity

Princess Castle Maze- Printable Activity

A Ton of Great Princess Party Ideas

Total Guide to Princess Party- Printable Invitations, printable crafts (including crowns to decorate), lots more!

Hope this has been helpful for you! If anybody has any other neat and frugal ideas for a Princess Party, or if you’d like to share how you did yours, I’d love to hear from you!